Book Image

Tabular Modeling with SQL Server 2016 Analysis Services Cookbook

By : Derek Wilson
Book Image

Tabular Modeling with SQL Server 2016 Analysis Services Cookbook

By: Derek Wilson

Overview of this book

SQL Server Analysis Service (SSAS) has been widely used across multiple businesses to build smart online analytical reporting solutions. It includes two different types of modeling for analysis services: Tabular and Multi Dimensional. This book covers Tabular modeling, which uses tables and relationships with a fast in-memory engine to provide state of the art compression algorithms and query performance. The book begins by quickly taking you through the concepts required to model tabular data and set up the necessary tools and services. As you learn to create tabular models using tools such as Excel and Power View, you’ll be shown various strategies to deploy your model on the server and choose a query mode (In-memory or DirectQuery) that best suits your reporting needs. You’ll also learn how to implement key and newly introduced DAX functions to create calculated columns and measures for your model data. Last but not least, you’ll be shown techniques that will help you administer and secure your BI implementation along with some widely used tips and tricks to optimize your reporting solution. By the end of this book, you’ll have gained hands-on experience with the powerful new features that have been added to Tabular models in SSAS 2016 and you’ll be able to improve user satisfaction with faster reports and analytical queries.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Tabular Modeling with SQL Server 2016 Analysis Services Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Modifying the date table with the YEAR function


In order to make the date table easier to use in reporting, you will add new columns to the table created in the Creating a date table in Visual Studio recipe. In this recipe, you will create columns based on the date column such as year, month, and weekday.

Getting ready

Complete the steps in the Creating a date table in Visual Studio recipe.

How to do it...

  1. Open the Model.bim to the Calc_Date_T table.

  2. On the Add Column next to CRASH_DATE, select the first cell and enter the formula to return the year from the date:

            =YEAR(Calc_Date_T[CRASH_DATE])
    
  3. Once you have done this, press Enter:

How it works...

In this recipe, you added a new calculated column to the Calc_Date_T table to show the year for each record. You passed the date to the YEAR function and it returned the 4-digit year as the output. Using this method, you can create the columns required to build a hierarchy for your uses to leverage.